I’m continuing to play Candy Crush, and to retroactively understand all the remarks people were making about it on Twitter, and all the remarks Paul was making about it in our living room. For example: chocolate. Paul kept saying chocolate was evil, EVIL, and I thought sure, it was probably challenging but didn’t require that kind of language in front of the children. Well, I repent, Paul. I repent of my judgey feelings. The children need to KNOW how evil chocolate is. They need to LEARN, while they’re still young.

One of my favorite things now is when I accidentally trigger one of those avalanches of clattering and as a result knock out a chocolate section completely. ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS. That is, I look at the world and I consider all its vast and varied wonders—and after carefully considering all those wonders, one of my FAVORITE THINGS is a thing that happens accidentally on Candy Crush sometimes.

My aunt just left after one of her usual fun visits at my parents’ house, and my mom and I always feel a little wan after she leaves because it seems like now there’s No More Fun. So today after moping around the house for awhile I emailed my mom and asked did she want to go out to lunch and to Goodwill to look for things for Elizabeth’s Halloween costume, and she said YES and we were OUT THE DOOR.

Elizabeth wants to be the White Witch of Narnia. I did an image search so I know that in the movie the White Witch has, like, beaded ballgowns, long fur capes, dreadlocks, and icicles sticking out of the top of her head. We haven’t seen the movie, so I asked Elizabeth what she thought the White Witch looked like, and Elizabeth thought she probably wore all white, so we’re going with that version. We have a pretty good start on it already because she has a white fake-fur coat, white tights, and silver shoes. She also has a white skirt, but it’s a short cotton-knit playskirt—not very White Witchy. My hope was that I could find something cheap at Goodwill, AND I DID:

What a ridiculous picture. There is no way to tell what’s going on here. I will have to describe it for you, as if there were no picture at all. On the left is a women’s size 7 ankle-length Jessica McClintock white shimmery/satiny skirt, or possibly a very fancy half-slip for under a wedding dress, way prettier that it looks in this frankly terrible and useless photo. I’m not sure yet how I’ll pin it—maybe I’ll fold/roll it so it’s still a skirt, or more likely I’ll pin on some shoulder straps so she can wear it as a dress, but WHATEVER, it’s exactly what I was hoping to find. It was $4.99, but then it turned out all the stuff on the Halloween racks was 50% off AND I have a 10%-off-every-purchase Goodwill card (it costs $10 and you can use it for a year, so if you spend more than $100/year it’s worth it—and if not, it’s a nice donation to Goodwill), so it was $2.25. TWO TWENTY-FIVE FOR THE REALIZATION OF MY DREAMS.

I was not really thinking when I took this photo, apparently, because I have the Goodwill stuff interspersed with the craft store stuff, so next there’s a white feather boa from Michaels, looking as if it’s part of the skirt, which gives the whole thing a racy look. (Plus, the hanging-loops are still on the skirt/slip and they’re flopping out looking like shoulder straps, and the skirt is folded over a bit creating a false bustline as if it’s a dress DID NO ONE THINK THIS OUT?) I’m not sure how she’ll wear that boa, but probably just around her shoulders. Or maybe I’ll pin it to the bottom of the skirt? or drape it around and around her neck? I don’t know, but I had a 40%-off-one-item coupon so it was $2.99. Probably unnecessary, but fun to buy.

Next is a package of plain white cardboard crowns, also from Michaels. I was all, “Hm, too bad they only have these colorful crowns and they seem too small, I wish they had something plain white and adjustable, oh well giving up and moving on,” and my mom was all, “Wait, like this exact thing hanging right here?” I think there are six of them in the pack. $2.99. Maybe we’ll decorate one with sparkles and/or glitter glue, or maybe it’s best to leave it white, I’m not sure.

On top of the crowns is a 2-pack of fake pearl bracelets from Goodwill, $.88. Again, probably-unnecessary-but-fun.

And last is a shawl-thing, triangular with impressive silky fringe, also from Goodwill. The fabric is champagne, but I think it’ll work because it’s so shot-through with silver that the overall effect is silvery/shimmery/fancy. It has a border of black and silver beads. 50% off, then another 10% off, so it was $.90.

I’m very pleased. I think this is going to work nicely. She can borrow a pair of my faux pearl earrings, too.

Oh! Oh, and then ALSO at Goodwill, I found a Lands’ End girls’ raincoat, a LONG one, like for SERIOUS RAIN, just exactly the sort of raincoat I would have loved to find for her this past summer for camp. I looked at the tag and it was $10, so I was going to pass it up (it’s in her size RIGHT NOW, so she’d only get one year’s use out of it and it might not even rain), but then I saw the tag was the color of the day so it was 50% off! And then another 10% off with my card! So it was $4.50. WELL OKAY THEN.

It does not look very long in this picture because I’m holding it funny and as you can see I was employing the “Are you going to make it look like it belongs on Etsy or are you going to get the job done quickly and easily?” method of photography, but it’s about knee length. The outside is a very sturdy- and waterproof-feeling hot pink, and the inside is a nice-feeling bright yellow canvas. I’d be surprised if it had ever been worn. I’ll bet someone else bought it for camp and then it didn’t rain.

One of the kids asked me this morning how long until Christmas. First I said something irritable (he asked right in the busy part of the morning routine, and it is NOT EVEN HALLOWEEN YET), but then a few minutes I relented, sighed, did the math…and huh, it’s two months from today. So when I was at Target later, I started something I should have started last month, which was my “buy a gift card every time I go to Target to spread out the financial impact” plan. They didn’t have the holiday ones by the registers yet (sometimes they have them earlier over by the greeting cards, but I forgot to check), but they had this nice vaguely-holidayish one so I got that.

I also bought this cute little fox thing in the dollar section:

It says it’s a candy dish, but it’s more the right size to put on the bureau for, like, a few small pairs of earrings or a couple of hair elastics. Or it would be good near the sink if you take your rings off to do dishes.

Incidentally, that post I just linked to above for the gift card plan also mentions The Girl My Boyfriend Cheated On Me with in High School. There is an update on her, which is that now she’s one of Elizabeth’s Girl Scout leaders. Imagine my surprise. And hers. She seems like a perfectly nice woman; I wonder if things will ever decrease in awkwardness enough for us to make eye contact?

This morning I am in an uproar over THIS:

Perhaps you have not immediately joined my uproar. Perhaps you are nodding as if you know what I’m talking about, but hoping it will be made clear soon because so far it’s not coming to you. Never mind: I didn’t notice until I opened the box. I will assist:

I bought this chocolate, which was the same price I usually pay, and brought it home to find that it is now HALF AS MUCH in the box. There used to be eight individually-wrapped 1-ounce squares, and I don’t mind if they want to stop individually wrapping them, though I do wish they wouldn’t act like it’s an improvement that I have to break the pieces myself now. But HALF the chocolate? HALF???

I am familiar with the concept of making packages smaller. Ice cream is in 1.5-quart containers now instead of half-gallon. I notice soda is trying to pull the same deal with 1.5-liter bottles. Jif peanut butter went around crowing that THEY were still 18 ounces while Skippy had reduced to 16 ounces—but now Jif is 16 ounces too (and not mentioning it, I notice). Manufacturers say it’s “so they won’t have to raise the price,” but since they go right ahead and raise prices ALSO I’m not going with that one. Plus, reducing the size IS IN FACT RAISING THE PRICE.

I suppose what they’re saying is they think customers will be too stupid to notice a size reduction but would complain about a price increase. Since I just bought a HALF-WEIGHT box of chocolate without noticing the decrease I guess it’s hard to argue with that. On the other hand, I DID NOTICE when I got home. And while a price increase makes me sigh about inflation and how much better things used to be in my day, a size reduction makes me feel CHEATED and TRICKED and WRONGED.

Also, this has a DRAMATIC IMPACT on two of my favorite recipes. My brownie recipe used to use 5/8ths of a box of Baker’s, and now uses ONE AND A QUARTER boxes. My fudge recipe used to use 1/2 a box, and now uses a WHOLE BOX. If I mess up a batch of fudge, and I do that fairly regularly, I am out a WHOLE BOX of chocolate. This pretty much means I’m not making fudge anymore, and I know Baker’s is a big company but I think there’ll be a meeting about why their sales have dipped so dramatically in my town.

I took a month to get around to buying an Instead Softcup, and then another month to get up the nerve to try it. Now I have tried it, I’m done trying it, and I’m ready to give a report.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I’d like to start by praising the instructions. Here’s how they start:

“Remember the first few times you used tampons or wore contact lenses? Well, reusable Softcup also takes a little time to learn to use correctly and comfortably. At first, it may seem awkward to either insert or remove reusable Softcup…that’s OK, most women experience that.”

I found that tremendously encouraging and heartening.

I bought the reusable version (each one can be rinsed and reused for the length of one period), but there’s also a disposable version. Since they have to be changed at least every 12 hours, I figured the 2-pack of reusables would last two full periods, but the 14-pack of disposables would last at most 7 days—and more likely less than 5 days. It’s approximately the same price per box, so that makes the reusables a much better deal—especially because even with a disposable I imagine you’d still need to rinse it out and not just drop it in the trash as-is, lest the family freak out.

My own personal situation, for comparison going into this, is that I’ve had only c-sections and I don’t like the feeling of tampons. I usually use reusable cloth pads, and it was a little hurdle to get used to rinsing those out but now I don’t mind it.

So. Putting the Softcup in. You sit down on the toilet to do this. You pinch the round Softcup edge so it looks like a number 8. Then you slide it in flat and level like a cookie sheet into the oven. You heard me. Cookie sheet. You don’t insert it UP and IN like a tampon, you insert it ACROSS and DOWN like…nothing else, ever. This made no sense to me until I tried it, but now I want to look again at the anatomical drawings in the gynecologist’s office.

For a few minutes after I put it in, I felt a slight crampy feeling, which worried me—but that feeling went away, and then I didn’t feel anything. I was triumphant: NOW I had a tampon-like thing that was NOT A TAMPON!

Alas: within a couple of hours, I’d justified the prudent use of a back-up pad. I was a little discouraged, because the cup was nowhere near full and it had been nowhere near 12 hours, but I thought I probably just hadn’t done it right somehow, so I rinsed it (slight hurdle, but okay—I could get used to that, as with rinsing pads) and tried it again. The same thing happened again.

That’s when I gave up. Not because of the leaking per se, though that was discouraging, but because of something I haven’t discussed yet: removal. I don’t know what I was imagining, but I guess something…tidier. And maybe I would have gotten used to it and started doing a better job at it, and maybe I had it in wrong which would explain both the leaking and the messy removal, and maybe the leaking was the only reason the removal was messy—but sometimes you just find your own personal line, and I’d found mine.

Not only was removal quite an unpleasant feeling to both my hand and my Interior Regions, but also to my psyche: you have to REACH IN and FIND and then GRIP and PULL. And the circle is NO LONGER PINCHED NARROW as it was for insertion, and it is SURPRISINGLY STURDY PLASTIC. And then there I was, sitting, with one hand bloodied and holding something that needed immediate rinsing before reinserting, and I still needed to clean myself up as well. Goodness, what to do? Wipe with one hand while holding the other hand aloft, trying not to spill; then stand, go to the sink, rinse out the Softcup, wash hands; then go back, sit down, wipe again, put the Softcup back in? What a complicated mess! And impossible to do in, say, a work/public restroom. Luckily I was at home, but it was quite a procedure even so.

So my review sounds very negative, doesn’t it? I tried it, I didn’t like it, I’m not going to use it. BUT! I think it’s like cloth pads: some people might try them and say “UG, they feel like DIAPERS, I HATE them! And I’m not willing to RINSE and LAUNDER them, what a complicated mess!!” Whereas I find them cozy and I don’t mind the fuss. So it’s just a matter of finding the tool that works for your tolerances. And my experience with the Softcup told me that it wasn’t right for me (though I’m saving the second one that came in the box, just in case I feel like trying again later), but it also told me that it seemed to have good potential for a different sort of person: it seemed well made, and the instructions were very good, and overall it seemed GOOD. Just not for ME. (Probably. Maybe later.)

I like the Starbucks salted caramel mocha very much—but I like about HALF of one. Which makes me unhappy when it’s a four-dollar drink. BUT: this last time, I discovered it KEEPS beautifully. I put it in the fridge when I got home, and later when it was cold I sipped some. Delicious like a milkshake. I also tried mixing some about 50-50 with plain coffee and microwaving it, and that was really good too: less rich, of course, but sometimes that’s what you want. (Stir the leftover first, because the chocolate sinks to the bottom.)

********

While everyone was playing Candy Crush, I didn’t realize I was playing the Webkinz version of the same game: Goober’s Atomic Adventure. So if you’re thinking about getting a Webkinz AND you love Candy Crush, there’s another point in the Yes Do It column.

The way I finally found out about Candy Crush is that we finally got smart phones. You know how at some point, you almost HAVE to join in with something? Like, you don’t HAVE-TO-have-to: I remember my grandparents refusing to get a computer because they didn’t see the point of it and couldn’t think of anything they’d do with it, and they never did get one. So you CAN be like that. It’s ALLOWED.

But when the rest of society is connecting in a certain way, refusing to participate comes with consequences. My grandparents missed out on email from their grandchildren who no longer wrote letters, and they missed out on digital photos, and they missed out on the fun of online research. In my case, we had cell phones that could sort of text, but there was a length-limit so most texts got broken up into several (and we pay per text), and it was a gigantic pain to SEND texts: you had to use the number pad, pressing each number enough times to get the letter you wanted. Meanwhile, texting was so common that other people assumed we had texting even if we told them we didn’t really use it, so we’d miss important information (Brownies meeting canceled, for example) because we weren’t checking our phones—or we’d get the information, but it was an enormous hassle to access it, and to respond in kind. And we couldn’t take photos, or play games, or use apps.

For awhile, that was fine: sure, it would be nice to have those things, but it would also be nice to have lots of other things we don’t have, and that isn’t a reason to automatically acquire them. When a certain percentage of the population crossed over, however, I started having flashbacks to how I felt about my grandparents acting as if it was pointless and silly and overly-expensive to have a computer. Psh, our horse and carriage works just FINE! What do we need to go spend money on an AUTOMOBILE for? We never go farther than into town anyway!

But my cell phone cost less than $7 a month, and I wasn’t willing to pay what I’d heard was the monthly cost of a smart phone (times two, since Paul would want one as well), so there we were: willing to participate, but also not willing.

Then several things happened at once. First, we got to the point where it would be more convenient for US if Rob had a cell phone—but our $7/month plan is olllllld (we got it when I was pregnant with William, when it was $5/month) and not available for new phones, and we were NOT going to buy him a better phone/plan than we had, especially when we don’t know yet if he’ll be responsible with a phone. And second, Paul’s boss mentioned he had a non-iPhone plan that cost in the $10-30/month range, and that he was happy with it.

So we signed up, got ourselves smartphones, and gave Rob my old cell phone that only costs $7/month and limits his texting. (We give Paul’s old phone to William when he needs one.) Now I can play Candy Crush while waiting for the kids to be done with karate, and I can take a photo of something at Target, and Rob can text me that math club is over early and I can come get him. It’s nice to feel caught up with other people again.

This weekend Rob wanted to talk about going to the principal of the high school where he is a brand-new freshman, to protest the sexism of there being only a girls’ softball team and no boys’ team. This is the kind of topic that has two main layers:

1. The “Is it sexism?” layer, which makes me exhausted and furious, and which I don’t think he has the brain development to understand yet, and which I’m not entirely sure I can figure out either, and

2. The “Should he do this?” layer, which is interesting to me and it’s the kind of conversation that makes it fun to have teenaged kids.

So I focused on the second layer, though I addressed the first layer by saying, “Yes, and how there’s only a boys’ wrestling team, and only a boys’ football team, and only a boys’ baseball team!” because OH MY GOD ALREADY I FEEL THE RISING NEED TO CRY AND/OR INFLICT PAIN.

The second topic has lower emotions for me. It’s something I feel like I can talk about in a neutral and cheerful way, because it feels more PRACTICAL. SHOULD he go to the principal about something like this? Yay, he’s going to be sorry he ever brought it up! (Except he won’t, because he loves this kind of picking-apart-the-issues conversation. It’s one of his redeeming qualities.) (I mean, for ME it is. Paul finds it tiresome in both of us, and is grateful that at least it means I don’t mind handling that aspect of child-rearing.)

He could start by considering what his stake is. Does this affect him personally? That is, does Rob want to play softball, and that’s why he’s protesting? No, he does not want to play softball. Does he know any boys who DO want to play softball? No, he doesn’t. Does he want to help organize a boys’ softball team? No, he does not. It’s not that I think the person registering a complaint has to be someone affected by the issue, nor do I think that person needs to fix the issue or be the one to come up with an alternative solution (that would be like saying the customer who reports that a pipe is leaking in the store bathroom has to be the one to figure out why it’s leaking and then also be the one to make the repair—and also that they shouldn’t have reported it because it didn’t bother them when they were in the bathroom and now they’re leaving the store so it isn’t their issue), but it would certainly give WEIGHT to the complaint if Rob had a reason for making it other than pure pique. But no, it’s just the pique.

Next is to figure out if/why it’s a problem to anyone, apart from Rob’s personal stake. Because if _I_ were the principal, I would be motivated to move this issue up the priorities list only if there were boys who wanted to play softball or if this set-up was making girls or boys feel like second-class citizens: if no boys want to play softball, and if girls/boys aren’t being treated differently in a bad way, I’d feel like I was going to a lot of effort just for a theoretical issue, and would want to first deal with all the actual issues demanding my attention, such as a group of girls asking for the right to have a wrestling team. (With a side-note here to Rob about how of course maybe things were SET UP to MAKE boys not want to play softball, in which case that was another issue to discuss. Rob, who had been gearing up to make that point, stood down, mollified.) I don’t know if it’s a problem or not—but then, I’m not interested. If Rob is interested, he can think through why he considers it a problem.

All right, then! The next step is to make sure Rob understands the actual situation. IS it a girls-only softball team? Or may boys try out and play? There are only girls on the cheer squad right now, but boys are certainly welcome to participate (and in fact they are in huge demand): it’s “the cheer squad” not “the girls-only cheer squad.” Or are there perhaps boys’ softball tryouts every year, but they can only have a team if there are enough boys to make a team, and there aren’t enough? Because that would be a very different situation than the “only girls get a softball team” situation Rob is objecting to. I suspect it IS a girls-only team, but it would be wise to verify this before storming the principal’s office.

Next! Assuming it IS girls-only, let’s find out WHY it’s girls-only. I notice there’s no girls’ baseball team. So are we perhaps talking about a girl version and a boy version of a sport? Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether such a division is necessary or polite, it’s good to see if we can understand the idea behind the set-up. I looked up softball on Wikipedia, and it was not started as a women’s game or as a women’s version of baseball: it was just a variation on baseball that could be played indoors in the off-season. Wikipedia says that in the U.S., it is played both both men and women, both recreationally and competitively. It notes, though, that “Competitive fastpitch softball for girls is growing increasingly popular.” So while it seems that in our school district it might be baseball for boys and softball for girls, it’s not like it has to be that way. Is it that year after year they offered both baseball and softball for both boys and girls, but year after year there weren’t enough girls to make a baseball team or boys to make a softball team? Maybe our school is big enough for two teams but not for four, and there was a vote at some point, or maybe there’s an annual survey to find out what the kids want the next year. Maybe there are national organizations making these decisions, and the principal has nothing to do with it. It would be good to get some backstory.

And what would Rob like the result of this meeting to be? Again, it’s not that the person who notices a problem is in charge of fixing it or even in charge of knowing what should be done instead—but it would be useful to know ahead of time whether he wants an explanation, a solution, or a vent. If he wants an explanation, my guess is that the principal has one prepared. If he wants to vent, my guess is that the principal is up to the task of saying something soothing about how he’s glad Rob came to him with this. If he wants a solution, it would be good to at least have a concept of what SORT of solution he has in mind—or to know that he doesn’t have any idea, so that he can say so frankly if asked, without being surprised by it and stammering and letting the principal think, “Uh huh, another teenager just venting pique.”

Rob could also consider that we all have only a limited amount of time and energy to spend, so we have to pick and choose our issues and missions. Is this one that’s near the top of his personal priority list, or would his time be better spent elsewhere, while someone who DOES want a boys’ team, or DOES have an idea for fixing the issue, or DOES play sports at all, takes this one? I would not, of course, want to imply that hormones can lead to Feeling Pissy, and that Feeling Pissy can lead a person to take up Irritation-based Causes—but if this IS a Feeling Pissy and an Irritation-based Cause, perhaps those could be usefully redirected to something he’d have more long-term interest in, such as spiffing up the computer team.

If I start with the assurance that I know blogging isn’t “dead” (as evidenced by the number of BLOGGERS who are BLOGGING), and go on to say that I realize that what can SEEM like dying is more like “moving on”/evolving/progressing, can I THEN say that I’m sorry the changes are what they are and also sorry that I don’t feel like changing along with them?

I will tell you what it feels like to me, even though that means slipping into second-person singular. Imagine being new to an area and not having many friends and feeling kind of isolated and less social than you’d like to be, but without seeing much of a way around that. Imagine that every day you pass a coffee shop that looks like it has what you want: people sitting around, talking, happy. It feels like you’d be intruding if you went in there—but one day you’re in a heck-with-it mood so you just DO. You order a coffee, you sit down, you feel super-self-conscious but no one is being mean to you or telling you not to sit at that table. You listen in to the conversations but you don’t join in.

You start going regularly, and then daily. People start recognizing you and saying hi. You start to recognize people, and you start to get to know them just based on what you can overhear of their conversations. One day, part of the group orders too many doughnuts, so they offer you one. One day someone says “Is anyone sitting here?” and sits at your table. Sometimes the conversations are split into smaller groups, but other times everyone’s talking together—and one day one of the loudest people turns to you and says, “I mean, RIGHT? You agree with me, right?” And you DO, so you say so, very briefly and shyly, and then the conversation goes on and LOOK YOU PARTICIPATED!!!

From there it goes much faster. You start saying something sometimes when it’s a big conversation. One day you buy a big box of doughnut holes and you offer them around. LOTS of people now say hi to you when you come in. One day you have a dentist appointment so you don’t go to the coffee shop, and the next day someone asks where you were. It’s exactly what you want: a low-pressure, big-group social interaction situation where you can drop in or drop out whenever it works for you—but also, over time, really get to know people well. Sometimes you sit with just one person and have an intense conversation; sometimes you sit with a small group; sometimes everyone’s talking at once. You get to know people and it’s fun to catch up every day. Some people do a lot of talking; some people do a lot of listening; some people do a lot of both.

Then a huge percentage of the group discovers a new place. It’s dark and loud—lots of dancing and dance music. You can kind of talk there, but you have to yell. It’s hard to see who’s there. A big chunk of the coffee shop group starts hanging out there all the time. Maybe they come to the coffee shop once a month, but it’s hard to catch up on that much time; you lose track of their lives and they lose track of yours. They say, “Dude, we’re not gone—you should join us at the new place! Come ON!” And so you try, but you don’t like it there. It’s not your style at all, and it makes you feel frazzled and exhausted, and you don’t feel like you get to talk to anyone there anyway. So you don’t go, or you only go once in a while.

Some of the group still hangs around at the coffee shop. And some new people start hanging around there, too, but they’re in a different stage of life and you don’t really click with them, and also you’re discouraged by the thought of getting to know a whole new group. You wouldn’t say the coffee shop is OVER—I mean, you’re still there and so is some of the group and so is the coffee shop itself. But it’s not the same thing anymore, and you miss everybody else, and yet you don’t want to go to the new place.

Yes? Good analogy? Does it include all the elements: the non-death of the old and yet the unhappy effects of the new? The concept of what is lost, and the sense in which it is lost? The missing of friends, without accusation/blame and with a total understanding that the left-behind person doesn’t HAVE to be left behind and yet chooses to for understandable reasons, and yet is ALSO SAD ABOUT THAT? The sadness of wanting to want to—but not wanting to?

Twitter kind of felt like a coffee shop to me at first, too: the way you could drop in at any time and find people to talk to. But now it feels to me more like the dark noisy club: chaos, with short storylines and missing most of it and too many strangers in the dark and I can’t see who’s talking to me and I can’t concentrate on what people are saying, and following someone means you have to listen to EVERYTHING THEY SAY EVEN IF THEY NEVER SHUT UP and you have to set up filters and lists just to process the number of people talking. Vlogging feels like it puts internet interactions RIGHT BACK with EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD where people get points for being attractive and charismatic and outgoing and fast-thinking, as opposed to blogging/internet where people could take their time and think about what they wanted to say, and didn’t have to look good, and where they could be good at written communication rather than spoken communication. Blogging still exists, but commenting has gotten difficult because of all the spam-blocking mechanisms, and also commenting has itself changed. And many blogs have turned into sales pitches—like someone who comes to the coffee shop and keeps talking about this great line of products they sell. Many others have turned into one-subject blogs about decorating or fashion or fitness or children, which feels similar to having a friend who starts only talking about one subject.

Meanwhile, there were people who followed my blog and I followed theirs, so we kept up on each other’s lives. I know that when they stopped blogging it doesn’t mean they’re GONE or that we can’t still TALK—but that WAS the way we talked! WITH OUR BLOGS. And now some of them never or almost never come to the coffee shop (which is just as understandable as someone not wanting to go somewhere else), so I’m back to wondering how to increase social interaction WHEN I’D THOUGHT THAT ISSUE WAS SO PERFECTLY FIXED. That was how I made friends; that was how I related to my friends; now some of those friends have moved away and I don’t know what’s going on in their lives anymore and I miss knowing what’s going on in their lives and I miss those people and I feel like I don’t know them anymore. Even though they have zero obligation to keep blogging about their lives just because I wish they would, and even though I would be pissed if anyone implied I was obligated to do so myself, and even though there ARE still people who ARE still blogging.

NO ONE HAS TO BLOG, just like no one has to be your friend. NO ONE OWES ANYONE A WINDOW INTO THEIR LIVES. But when so many people I knew stopped, I started missing knowing what was going on with them, just as if they’d stopped coming to the coffee shop where I used to see them several times a week, and I don’t feel like I get anything equivalent from Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram or Pinterest. (Except when a Facebook friend didn’t realize her Pinterest account was attached to her Facebook account and she pinned a whole bunch of “fun ways to announce a pregnancy” stuff.)

I took the kids to get their flu shots the other day, which caused quite a sensation. I forget how MANY of them there are until people are staring and I’m thinking, “WHAT?? …Oh yeah.” The funny thing is that I feel the same way when I see someone out with three or four kids, or when I see Christmas card photos with three or four kids: I look at them like, “Whoo, that is a LOT of kids!”

Anyway. I have a tip to pass on, from the nurse. Passing on this tip involves by necessity passing on a compliment someone gave me and the children, and I realize that’s a special kind of annoying, but I request that you allow it to slide this one time because of the potential benefits involved if you end up finding this tip helpful. OR: allow it to slide because you already do the same thing, so the praise also applies to you. OR: allow it to slide because I will do NO preening and I will remain utterly aware that for every compliment someone gives me about parenting there are a hundred others thinking something vicious about it. Also: I think it’s a tip pretty much everyone already knows.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The nurse was giving the shots one after another and she and I were getting a really efficient assembly-line style going. She praised how well the children were doing, and then she said, “It makes ALL the difference that you’re being all matter-of-fact and we’re-just-getting-this-done about it. We get parents in here who are like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mommy’s sorry!!’—and it’s just a MESS. It freaks the kids out, they think something horrible must be happening.”

So! A parenting tip from me and a pediatric nurse: act NONCHALANT. Callous, if you will. If you would like to copy me exactly, you should add a layer of grim assumption that the children will be awful and embarrassing despite the firm and scary lecture delivered beforehand in the car; plus a layer of feeling self-conscious about having so many children, taking up so much of the waiting room, generating so much paperwork, etc.; plus a layer of feeling like an idiot because in your distraction you called a child by the wrong name TWICE (“Willi…Henr…EDWARD”) AND got the age order wrong, right in front of the nurse. Putting your mind on yourself really helps you ignore the children!

Which is not to say you necessarily CAN apply this tip even if you WANT to. (PLUS, it fails to solve the issue of all the children who are going to lose their flip no matter HOW calm the parent is.) When I took Edward for his first blood draw, I knew my own calmness was a Key Element. And then who do you think could barely even talk to him because she was choking so hard, tears running down her cheeks as the nurses looked grim and disapproving and like they were inwardly rolling their eyes at stupid hysterical parents making everything so much worse? That’s right. I should have brought the other four kids with me to achieve the necessary level of detachment.

Also, here is the annual reminder (which most of you don’t even need so you’re free to go do something else now) that stomach flu is not flu. I know, they CALL it flu! It’s so silly! But it’s not flu. “Flu” is short for “influenza,” which is a respiratory illness: like a cold, but EXTREME. Stomach flu is a completely unrelated category of illnesses related to the digestive system. I think it’s fine to call a stomach ailment “stomach flu,” because that’s just how the language shook out there, and because a lot of the time we don’t even know if what we had was a virus or food poisoning or what. What I DON’T think is fine is “Oh my god, the whole family has stomach flu!! Stupid useless flu shot!!” The flu shot may reduce a person’s chances of getting influenza but it will do THING ZERO about the completely unrelated categories of stomach bugs and food poisoning.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I wanted to review The Cuckoo’s Calling WITHOUT mentioning that Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, but it would never have worked: someone would have mentioned it in the comments immediately. Besides, once People magazine has mentioned it AND a new edition has been put out with the information about the pseudonym right in the author section, it doesn’t seem like it’s exactly a secret anymore.

Learning who actually wrote it is the reason I read it: I wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise, partly because I feel like I’ve reached my lifetime limit of books written by men about male detectives, and partly because of judging it by its cover (I think it looks like a “beach read”—i.e., trashy and lightweight).

But I DID read it, and I wonder what I would have thought of it if I hadn’t known the real author? I never would have recognized the writing style. I’d say she successfully pulls off writing a male narrator—but I’m more sensitive to such things in the other direction (men trying to write female narrators) so I’d want to ask a few men what they thought.

I liked the book overall, and I would recommend it. I hope she writes more stories about this same detective.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Saving Fish from Drowning is by Amy Tan, but it reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver. It has, however, been a long time since I’ve read a Barbara Kingsolver, because I find they leave me with a card file of horrifying and depressing imagery, plus the feeling that the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and that anything we TRY to do about it (1) actually makes things worse and/or (2) makes us look ridiculous. That’s what this book left me with, too. If you LIKE that sort of thing, however, this is a great book for it: an interesting story, an interesting cast, and an omniscient narrator (I love omniscient narrators).